At the beginning of the fourth quarter of 2013, only the Consumer Staples sector earns an Attractive rating. My sector ratings are based on the aggregation of my fund ratings for every ETF and mutual fund in each sector.

At the outset of the 3Q2013, only the Consumer Staples sector earns an Attractive rating. My sector ratings are based on the aggregation of my fund ratings for every ETF and mutual fund in each sector.

At the outset of the second quarter of 2013, only a single sector earns an Attractive rating. My sector ratings are based on the aggregation of my fund ratings for every ETF and mutual fund in each sector.

The large-cap growth style ranks fourth out of the twelve fund styles as detailed in my Style Rankings for ETFs and Mutual Funds report. It gets my Neutral rating, which is based on aggregation of ratings of 23 ETFs and 694 mutual funds in the large-cap growth style as of February 6th, 2013.

The guts of an ETF are its holdings. And an ETF’s guts are what drive my ETF ratings. As highlighted in Barron’s, the only truly diligent assessment of an ETF is based on its holdings.
Research on an ETF’s holdings is important because an ETF’s performance is only as good as its holdings. Therefore, if you care about performance, you care about the ETF’s holdings.

Only one sector, Consumer Staples, earns my Attractive rating. See Figure 1 for my rankings of all ten sectors. My sector ratings are based on the aggregation of my fund ratings for every ETF and mutual fund in each sector.

Fund holdings affect fund performance more than fees or past performance. A cheap fund is not necessarily a good fund.
Our research on holdings enables investors’ to find funds with high quality holdings – AND – low fees.